Photo Updates

The verdict is in: yes! Ralph is going home, too. Well, I mean his photo, that is. I heard from the Pollock descendant who gave me all that fascinating detail about Ralph's life after he left his childhood home in Colorado, so now I have directions on where to send young Ralph's photograph.

Out of all the photographs marked "Thirza," I have yet to track down a Van Noate descendant for the hundred year old picture of baby Louise. I mentioned the other day about posting baby Louise's photograph on our local genealogical society's Facebook group, and I did get a few general suggestions, and one member sent me a rather complete copy of the family's tree. But as for how to contact a living descendant, well, the best suggestion was to try poking around on Facebook.

So I did. And found someone. The problem is, no matter where I look, I can only find rather distant relatives. The same went for the trees on Ancestry.com. There were about six different Ancestry subscribers who had Louise in their family tree, but every one of those trees was posted by someone who must be much like me—a little bit too enthusiastic about their genealogy. And what I'm seeking is a close relative, not a seventh cousin twice removed. But, using another tactic, I found that possibility.

The nexus is a grandchild of Louise's husband's brother. At least, I think that's the connection—and, trusting that the trees where I found the family line are actually accurate, it looks like that's the closest I'll get to contacting someone who might know how to get in touch with Louise's grandchildren.

Of course, that leaves the squishy part of contacting a stranger, out of the blue. It is definitely so much easier to research dead people. Even sending an email to a living descendant of a dead person isn't too difficult. But going straight to a relative of a relative of a relative—who doesn't even show the slightest interest in genealogy—well, that's a challenge I'm not sure I'm up to. Yet.

Give me a couple days and we'll see whether I chicken out. Baby Louise may just have to remain in that folder on my desk until a closer relative stumbles upon this post via our research assistant, Google.

  

A Clue from Baby Louise

Genealogy is always presented in a neatly-tied package when a researcher can ably articulate how she got from square one to the final conclusion.

When it comes to how I found the connection between some of the names in this collection of abandoned photographs from a northern California antique shop, don't count on me to supply such a tidy explanation. Yes, it was wonderful to realize I was gifted with a full name, Thirza Cole—or was it Thiega Cole?—for one of the pictures in the set. But that didn't help me connect the dots between Thirza and the other people identified in the collection bearing her name.

With the picture of baby Louise, however, I did get a viable hint. There was an inscription on the back of the photograph.

Let's face it: baby pictures are pretty nondescript. If you've seen one baby picture, you've seen them all—at least, this is how some people feel. The receipt of a baby photograph is really just a gesture of inclusion from some pretty proud parents. So this photo of baby Louise could have been from anybody—close family, distant relative, army buddy, college chum.

Thankfully, it wasn't, as I found out. Still, it took a lot of wandering about, poking through files, forming hypotheses and then seeing them dashed to the ground, crashing and burning with the discovery of subsequent documentation. I wasn't kidding when I said this search is not following any logical, linear pattern.

The note on the back of baby Louise's darling picture began, "For Thirza + Pauline" and was signed off, innocuously, "With love from the Baby."

I realize that doesn't tell us much—in my head, I'm screaming, "Whose baby?!?!"—but it did introduce a possibility. Who was Pauline, I wondered—a much more rational (not to mention, sedately-uttered) question that started my research in a solid direction. My first goal was to find a nexus between Thirza Cole and someone named Pauline.

Someone, presumably much later, had added in a different hand and color of ink, "Louise Van Noate," which will turn out to be another useful hint.

Between these two names and the one I already knew—Thirza Cole—I was ready to hunt and peck my way through online documents to see if any possibilities popped up.

Above: Reverse of photograph of baby Louise, bearing the inscription, "For Thirza + Pauline, With love from the Baby." The name, Louise Van Noate, appears to have been added later. Photograph currently in possession of the author.